Market Share Leaders as Marketing Guides?

If you want to run a first class marketing organization, benchmark against the category leader. Right?

Wrong.

Look at any given category and you're likely to see this common landscape: A market-share leader whose marketing is effective and probably conservative; a host of other players who more or less imitate the marketing tactics of the market leader; and then, maybe, one "challenger" who is the "idea leader" in the category.

Time and the market have proven that these idea leaders frequently become share leaders. Look at Charles Schwab in the brokerage category. Or Southwest and JetBlue among airlines.

The "idea leader" road is not for the faint of heart, but it's more likely to succeed than shadow marketing the share leader. Besides, it's a lot more fun.

Big Ideas from Small Teams

"Since founding Apple with engineer Stephen Wozniak, (Steve) Jobs has believed that small teams of top talent will outperform better-funded big ones. He has used the same approach at Pixar, where creative chief John Lasseter has led the way in creating blockbusters like Toy Story and Finding Nemo. Jobs also outsources far more selectively than his rivals. He'd rather have all his creatives working together than save a few bucks by outsourcing such work overseas."
-- Business Week

Big ideas come from small teams. Brand building is no exception to the Jobs rule. It is, at its best, a small team activity. That's why challengers worship the garage and the cocktail napkin, not the multinational conglomeration of bricks and mortar. The team that builds the brand can be the team that creates the advertising. It includes the client and a small, elite agency team. Its mode of operation is total collaboration. Its measure is always the mark, never the compromise. The brands of the future are being built this way.

A Letter to Talent

Dear Talent,

We may tell you that you are not as important as you think, not so meaningful in the big picture, not so relevant to the objective. We may use focus groups and copytesting and standards and committees to curtail your sway. We may proffer money and offices, titles and contracts, awards and praise (and the raised eyebrow of threatened disapproval) to buy your docility. We may even dance for a while a manic, macho ritual of success without you.

But in the end, we always come back to you. Because, the hard fact is, we are nothing without you. Without you, we are but a hierarchy of celibate priests. Without you, we have no future. Without you, we can't conceive. In this business, the incontrovertible fact is, we all serve Talent.

However, if you happen to be talented, don't let this go to your head!

The world is full of beautiful, empty heads, and of angelic exteriors cloaking petty, sulphurous interiors. At 20, you look like you were born to look; at 40, you look like you deserve to look.

The same goes for talent.

As a 40(plus) year old who did not start out a supermodel, but lucked to arrive at the dawn of my fifth decade not so much worse for the wear, allow me to offer a few words of advice to the younger and more talented:

1. Find more talented people than yourself to work with. The saddest person in the world is the most talented person in the room.
2. Protect your enthusiasm. Fake it and you lose it. Lose your enthusiasm and you soon lose all else.
3. Seek brains. The best client is someone smarter than you are (said Tibor Kalman). The best partner is someone smarter than you are. The best ( ) is someone smarter than you are.
4. Seek truth. If you use your talent to surround yourself with people who kiss your ass and tell you what you want to hear, that's the only thing you'll ever get from it. Sooner or later, you'll crash, and those people will be nowhere around.
5. Seek a standard. One that's hard to reach. If you're at a place where they love everything you do -- get out of that place! Go work someplace where they reject most of what you do. Where your work has to exceed your talent. You'll not only produce better work, you'll be happier.
6. Seek respecters of talent.Some places are at war with talent, some are in a terminal tailspin of denial about talent, and some places have a healthy respect and even love for talent. Find the third kind of place. Sacrifice -- money, pride, convenience -- to be there.
7. Don't confuse your talent with your life. Commit. To your standards. To your team. To your family. Talent isn't the be all and end all any more than beauty is. If you've been gifted, give back. Collaborate. Develop compassion. Learn humility by putting your talent and effort at the service of someone else's great cause. And don't sacrifice your life to your work. Better to have been untalented and happy.

Oh, and one of these days, maybe you'll send me your book.